One of those days

There are days when I feel drawn to him - to his physical presence - to all I have of him - to his grave. I often find myself wondering what would happen if I lay down on his grave and curled myself around his little marker stone. Would I feel closer to him? Would I feel connected to him in even a fraction of the way that I connect with Joni when I lie curled around her in our family bed and she finds my breast and nurses as she pleases? No, I don't think so. The ground is hard and cold. His marker is shiny cold and black. I want him to be there – somewhere where I can feel him - but he is not.

Sometimes my fantasies have me swallowed up by the earth at his grave - skipping the messiness of death, burial and decomposition and heading straight for elemental communion with my baby boy. This fantasy finds me on the days when my grief has been the hardest to face. On those days, being sucked alive into the earth feels like a completely appropriate, merciful and long overdue escape from the relentless saturation of my body and mind in missing him - but not really "missing" - "wanting him" is more like it. Of course I am needed here too much to let myself slip away, and so I don't let myself see where the fantasy would take me. But, the grief, and missing and wanting still remain.

Today is one of those days.